The Chronicle:
Wunji Lau'sAmong Giants
The silence was terrifying.
[Wunji Lau]
Lieutenant Malachai Kirchoff had ejected with nothing but a light spacesuit; no MMU, no mag-line, not even a damned can of soda. The wreckage of his Syreen was at least a kilometer away, moving farther every second. All around, Kirchoff could see flashes of thrusters and beam weapons, the remainder of his unit struggling, without a sound, against the pirate exo-armors.
Where the hell did they get exo-armors, anyway? he thought.
At this distance, he couldn't identify individuals, but he could tell where they were by the bright points of the thruster flares. One mote in particular seemed to be getting bigger. Fast.
The thought barely had time to register.
My God, it's headed right for me.
The exo-armor tried to get out of the way, since a collision with anything bigger than a pebble at a relative velocity of two kilometers per second would likely prove fatal. The huge machine twisted its torso violently as it burned its primary verniers. Kirchoff, by pure instinct, found himself kicking and flailing, trying to swim through nothingness. At the last moment, the exo-armor turned its screens to maximum in order to push Kirchoff away, attempting to gain a few precious centimeters.
It was enough. Almost.
An instant, and it was over. The Wyvern's pilot probably didn't feel a thing. There would be a bit of a scrape on the exo-armor's left shoulder, something his tech would give him hell for back home, but otherwise there was no harm done. For Kirchoff, it was as if he were a rag doll, picked up by the left foot and thrown across a room. The exo-armor, containing his teammate and killer, continued on its vector, leaving him spinning through the soundless emptiness.
He heard a brief hissing, cut off as auto-sealant covered the breach in his suit. He couldn't feel his left leg below the knee. Above the joint, there was a warm, wet sensation that kept expanding.
I'm bleeding into my suit. Realization of the magnitude of his injury didn't bother him. Shock, coupled with the ethereal quality of his surroundings, lent him a sense of peace he hadn't felt since before memory began. The battle still raged, but Kirchoff paid no further heed to the doings of Mankind. His squadron, the enemy, none of it mattered anymore. Nearby was a rapidly receding object that may or may not have been a leg. He didn't bother to look closer.
As the warmth spread past his waist, he marveled at the panoply of stars and basked in the distant light of the sun. Vast, so vast. The solar system, in all its titanic majesty, swirled about him, enfolding him, drawing him away from the petty activities of noise and impatience that he'd thought so important. Before, he had been foolish. Now, with the Universe as his grave, he understood his place and accepted it, insignificant as it was.
The sun grew dim in his eyes.
The silence. . .so lovely. . .P L E A S E C O M M E N T ! !
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